Dog Owners Allegedly Demand RM66,600 From Groomers After Its Tongue Was Accidentally Snipped

In a post uploaded to Facebook yesterday (6th August), a dog owner from Singapore took to the social media platform to voice his outrage over how his pet dog was treated when it was sent for grooming.

According to the user’s post, the owner’s toy poodle, Mario, was picked up by a grooming service called Pawschukang on 7th June at 10am for his first grooming session with them. However, later that day the owners received a phone call from the business’ owner. An excerpt from the post reads,

“At 3pm, we received a call from Nichelle, owner of Pawschukang, who calmly informed us that Mario’s tongue was “slit” during grooming, and he was bleeding non-stop despite applying ice on the open wound. Due to her calm tone, we assumed it was a small injury (a slit is a small cut right?) that was inflicted during the grooming and we agreed to meet them at the nearest vet immediately after the call.”

“When we reached the clinic, we were surprised by Nichelle’s verbiage, blaming Mario for being an active dog during grooming and how she has never met such an active dog in her grooming career. This was such an uncharacteristic description of Mario. But then again, we were supposedly paying a premium price for a certified and professional groomer who should be well trained and able to manage uncooperative dogs during grooming without snipping any extremities off!”

The owners were shocked to find that the “slit” the groomer described was actually an injury that nearly cut a small tip of its tongue off.

To make matters worse, the dog’s owner stated that the groomers did not immediately inform him after the incident happened, so the owners do not know when exactly Mario’s tongue got injured. He continued,

“According to the vet, Mario’s tongue could have been salvaged if they had acted responsibly enough to rush Mario to the vet as soon as possible. Due to the extended duration of inaction (estimated to be for a few hours), the dangling portion of the tongue had to be amputated, leaving Mario to have a shorter tongue now.”

“It was a painful recovery experience for Mario who had to be syringe and spoon-fed until he learnt how to lick up his food and water with a shortened tongue.”

While the grooming service has already reimbursed the owners with the veterinary fees, the post claims they did not fulfil their promises to fire the groomer responsible. They stated that the groomers also promised to compensate them with lifetime supplies of food, supplements, and groomings, but while they did consider donating this compensation to animal charities, they felt the offer was insincere and decided to forego the compensation.

“Our anger stems from the fact that Pawschukang did not make the attempt to rush Mario to the vet immediately after the incident… Instead, they left Mario to suffer for an unknown duration, to the point that the dangling portion could not be salvaged,” the post continued.

The following day, however, the owner of Pawschukang responded in their own Facebook post denying some of the allegations from the dog owners’ post, adding that the groomer responsible is no longer working with them.

She also shared a timeline of the entire incident, indicating that there was an estimated 30 minutes between the time of Mario’s injury and when it was taken to the vet. Screenshots of text messages between her and the owner’s wife were also included in the post.

Their exchange via text message showed that the grooming service offered monetary compensation a number of times, but Mario’s owner refused to accept it. It also indicates that the dog’s owners were the ones who requested to be compensated with a lifetime supply of dog food and SGD$18,000 – SGD$22,000 (approx RM54,499 – RM66,610).

However, the dog’s owner created another post in response to this statement, denying their claims, adding that there was no CCTV footage to account for this timeline of events that Pawschukang shared. The post also included an apology from the groomer who cut Mario’s tongue. Read the full post below for more details:

We have responded to allegations insinuating we are squeezing money out of PawschukangNow they’re claiming that- We…